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#house republicans block border reform
tomorrowusa · 2 months
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I know that Trump spewing bullshit is not exactly news. But since he's now responsible for blocking border reform through his Congressional minions, his hypocritical and blatantly dishonest rantings on Thursday need to be examined.
Some of his words were too conspiratorially vague to definitively fact-check. For example, Trump spoke of migrants as “entire columns of fighting-age men” and said “they look like warriors to me; something’s going on, and it’s bad” – winking at a baseless narrative about foreign adversaries using migration to surreptitiously assemble some sort of enemy force in the US. He said he thinks unnamed people are allowing migrants into the country because “they’re looking for votes,” faintly echoing his previous false claim about migrants being signed up to vote in the 2024 election – and declining to explain that non-citizens cannot vote in federal, state and almost all local elections (though some migrants might potentially receive citizenship years down the road). Trump also spoke of the US being “overrun” by a “new form” of crime he called “Biden migrant crime.” He made that claim though early data suggests that in 2023 the US was at or around its lowest violent crime rate in more than 50 years amid a sharp decline in homicides; though there were cases of undocumented people committing crimes during his own presidency; and though, despite some recent cases in which undocumented people are accused of serious offenses, research has found no connection between immigration and crime - and sometimes that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than people born in the US.
But wait, there's more!
Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that jails “throughout the world” are being emptied out so that prisoners can travel to the US as migrants, nor for his claim that foreign leaders are also emptying out mental health facilities for this purpose. Last year, Trump’s campaign was unable to provide any evidence for his narrower claim at the time that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US. Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN at the time they had not heard of anything that would corroborate Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration. CNN’s own search did not produce any evidence. The website FactCheck.org also found nothing.
People from other countries may be wondering whether somebody let Trump out of an asylum for narcissistic prevaricators in the US.
The bottom line is that Trump is blocking border reform just so he can hold photo-ops and rant incoherently about migrants until Election Day. Because of this, we can now accurately call it the Trump border crisis.
Yep, whenever writing about this situation (Tumblr or elsewhere), use the hashtag: #Trump Border Crisis
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mariacallous · 21 days
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It’s not too late, because it’s never too late. No outcomes are ever preordained, nothing is ever over, and you can always affect what happens tomorrow by making the right choices today. The U.S. Congress is finally making one of those right choices. Soon, American weapons and ammunition will once again start flowing to Ukraine.
But delays do have a price. By dawdling for so many months, by heading down the blind alley of border reform before turning back, congressional Republicans who blocked weapons and ammunition for Ukraine did an enormous amount of damage, some of it irreparable. Over the past six months, Ukraine lost territory, lives, and infrastructure. If Ukraine had not been deprived of air defense, the city of Kharkiv might still have most of its power plants. People who have died in the near-daily bombardment of Odesa might still be alive. Ukrainian soldiers who spent weeks at the front lines rationing ammunition might not be so demoralized.
The delay has changed American politics too. Only a minority of House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, joined most Democrats to approve $60 billion in aid yesterday. What is now clearly a pro-Russia Republican caucus has consolidated inside Congress. The lesson is clear: Anyone who seeks to manipulate the foreign policy of the United States, whether the tin-pot autocrat in Hungary or the Communist Party of China, now knows that a carefully designed propaganda campaign, when targeted at the right people, can succeed well beyond what anyone once thought possible. From the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion, President Vladimir Putin has been trying to conquer Ukraine through psychological games as well as military force. He needed to persuade Americans, Europeans, and above all Ukrainians that victory was impossible, that the only alternative was surrender, and that the Ukrainian state would disappear in due course.
Plenty of Americans and Europeans, though not so many Ukrainians, supported this view. Pro-Russia influencers—Tucker Carlson, J. D. Vance, David Sacks—backed up by an army of pro-Russia trolls on X and other social-media platforms, helped feed the narrative of failure and convinced a minority in Congress to block aid for Ukraine. It’s instructive to trace the path of a social-media post that falsely claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky owns two yachts, how it traveled up the food chain late last year, from the keyboard of a propagandist through the echo chamber created by trolls and into the brains of American lawmakers. According to Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, some of his colleagues worried out loud, during debates about military aid to Ukraine, that “people will buy yachts with this money.” They had read the false stories and believed they were true.
But with the passage of this aid bill, Russia’s demoralization campaign has suffered a severe setback. This is also a setback for the Russian war effort, and not only because the Ukrainians will now have more ammunition. Suddenly the Russian military and Russian society are once again faced with the prospect of a very long war. Ukraine, backed by the combined military and economic forces of the United States and the European Union, is a much different opponent than Ukraine isolated and alone.
That doesn’t mean that the Russians will quickly give up: Putin and the propagandists who support him on state television have repeatedly stated that their goal is not to gain a bit of extra territory but to control all of Ukraine. They don’t want to swap land for peace. They want to occupy Kharkiv, Odesa, Kyiv, and more. Now, while their goals become harder to reach, is a good moment for the democratic countries backing Ukraine to recalibrate our strategy too.
Once the aid package becomes law this week, the psychological advantage will once again be on our side. Let’s use it. As Johnson himself recommended, the Biden administration should immediately pressure European allies to release the $300 billion in Russian assets that they jointly hold and send it to Ukraine. There are excellent legal and moral arguments for doing so—the money can legitimately be considered a form of reparations. This shift would also make clear to the Kremlin that it has no path back to what used to be called “normal” relations, and that the price Russia is paying for its colonial war will only continue to grow.
This is also a good moment for both Europeans and Americans to take the sanctions and export-control regimes imposed on Russia more seriously. If NATO were running a true economic-pressure campaign, thousands of people would be involved, with banks of screens at a central command center and constantly updated intelligence. Instead, the task has been left to a smattering of people across different agencies in different countries who may or may not be aware of what others are doing.
As American aid resumes, the Ukrainians should be actively encouraged to pursue the asymmetric warfare that they do best. The air and naval drone campaign that pushed the Black Sea Fleet away from their coastline, the raids on Russian gas and oil facilities thousands of miles from Ukraine, the recruitment of Russian soldiers, in Russia, to join pro-Ukraine Russian units fighting on the border—we need more of this, not less. The Biden administration should also heed Johnson’s suggestion that the United States supply more and better long-range weapons so that Ukrainians can hit Russian missile launchers before the missiles reach Ukraine. If the U.S. had done so in the autumn of 2022, when Ukraine was taking back territory, the world might look a lot different today.
This war will be over only when the Russians no longer want to fight—and they will stop fighting when they realize they cannot win. Now it is our turn to convince them, as well as our own pro-Russia caucus, that their invasion will fail. The best way to do that is to believe it ourselves.
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mike luckovich
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
January 18, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JAN 19, 2024
This afternoon, Congress passed a new continuing resolution necessary to fund the government past the upcoming deadlines in the previous continuing resolution. Those deadlines were tomorrow (January 19) and February 2. The deadlines in the new measure are March 1 and March 8. This is the third continuing resolution passed in four months as extremist Republicans have refused to fund the government unless they get a wish list of concessions to their ideology.
Today’s vote was no exception. Eighteen Republican senators voted against the measure, while five Republicans did not vote (at least one, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, is ill). All the Democrats voted in favor. The final tally was 77 to 18, with five not voting. 
In the House the vote was 314 to 108, with 11 not voting. Republicans were evenly split between supporting government funding and voting against it, threatening to shut down the government. They split 107 to 106. All but two Democrats voted in favor of government funding. (In the past, Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and MIke Quigley of Illinois have voted no on a continuing resolution to fund the government in protest that the measure did not include funding for Ukraine.) 
This means that, like his predecessor Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to turn to Democrats to keep the government operating. The chair of the extremist House Freedom Caucus, Bob Good (R-VA), told reporters that before the House vote, Freedom Caucus members had tried to get Johnson to add to the measure the terms of their extremist border security bill. Such an addition would have tanked the bill, forcing a government shutdown, and Johnson refused.
“I always tell people back home beware of bipartisanship," Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) said on the House floor during the debate. “The most bipartisan thing in Washington, D.C., is bankrupting our country, if not financially, morally…. It’s not just the spending, it’s all the terrible policies that are attached to the spending.”
Republican extremists in Congress are also doing the bidding of former president Donald Trump, blocking further aid to Ukraine in its struggle to fight off Russian aggression and standing in the way of a bipartisan immigration reform measure. Aid to Ukraine is widely popular both among the American people and among lawmakers. Immigration reform, which Republicans have demanded but are now opposing, would take away one of Trump’s only talking points before the 2024 election. 
A piece today in the Washington Post by European affairs columnist Lee Hockstadter about the difficulties of reestablishing democracy in Poland after eight years under a right-wing leader illuminates this moment in the U.S. Hockstadter’s description of the party of former Polish leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski sounds familiar: the party “jury-rigged systems, rules and institutions to its own partisan advantage, seeding its allies in the courts, prosecutors’ offices, state-owned media and central bank. Kaczynski’s administration erected an intricate legal obstacle course designed to leave the party with a stranglehold on key levers of power even if it were ousted in elections.”
Although voters in Poland last fall reelected former prime minister Donald Tusk to reestablish democracy, his ability to rebuild the democratic and judicial norms torched by his predecessor have been hamstrung by his opponents, who make up an “irreconcilable opposition” and are trying to retain control over Poland through their seizure of key levers of government. 
The U.S. was in a similar situation during Reconstruction, when in 1879, former Confederates in the Democratic Party tried to end the government protection of Black rights altogether by refusing to fund the government until the president, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, withdrew all the U.S. troops from the South (it’s a myth that they left in 1877) and stopped trying to protect Black voting. 
At the time, the president and House minority leader James A. Garfield refused to bow to the former Confederates. Five times, Hayes vetoed funding measures that carried the riders former Confederates wanted, writing that the Confederates’ policy was “radical, dangerous, and unconstitutional,” for it would allow a “bare majority” in the House to dictate its terms to the Senate and the President, thus destroying the balance of power in the American government.
In 1879, well aware of the stakes in the fight, newspapers made the case that the government was under assault. American voters listened, the former Confederates backed down, and Garfield somewhat unexpectedly was elected president in 1880 as a man who would champion the idea of the protection of Black rights and the country itself from those who wanted to establish that states were more powerful than the federal government. 
Chastened, the leaders of the Democratic Party marginalized former Confederates and turned to northern cities to reestablish the party, beginning the transition to the party that would, fifty years later, usher in the New Deal.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
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beardedmrbean · 1 year
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives is poised to pass on Thursday Republican legislation intended to stop immigrants and illegal drugs crossing the nation's southwestern border with Mexico through tough new law enforcement steps.
The package, which Democrats have warned will be blocked in the Senate, would require asylum seekers to apply for U.S. protection outside the country. It also would resume construction of a wall along the border and expand federal law enforcement efforts.
While the bill is not expected to get to President Joe Biden's desk for signing into law, there are hopes in the Senate that it will spark negotiations for a bipartisan, comprehensive border security and immigration reform measure in coming months.
Debate on the House legislation was scheduled in anticipation of the Thursday midnight expiration of the "Title 42" immigration restriction that began under former President Donald Trump in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has allowed U.S. authorities to expel migrants to Mexico without the chance to seek asylum, citing health concerns.
On Wednesday, House Republican leaders had to delay debate on their bill while scurrying to nail down enough votes for passage.
At the last minute, provisions for the U.S. agriculture industry to comply with "E-Verify" requirements to confirm U.S. employment eligibility were scaled back because some lawmakers thought they would make hiring immigrant farm workers too cumbersome.
Republican Representative Chip Roy argued the legislation will close loopholes in U.S. asylum and immigrant detention procedures by requiring the Department of Homeland Security to "detain, remove or place in a secure third country" those seeking asylum while awaiting a decision from immigration authorities.
Democratic Representative Mary Gay Scanlon countered that it "does nothing more than sow chaos, anger and fear about this important humanitarian system" and "puts the blame on our broken immigration system on the backs of those fleeing violence" in their home countries.
Democrats want to couple different border security measures with legislation to broadly reform immigration laws, including providing pathways to citizenship for some unauthorized immigrants living in the United States.
The House voted 215-209 on Wednesday night to clear the bill for a separate vote on passage on Thursday, with no Democrats supporting the move.
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xtruss · 2 months
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Illustration and Design By Ally J. Levine
— By Moira Warburton | Published March 12, 2024
The U.S. Congress is navigating yet another government funding deadline — the eighth in less than six months — and are at an impasse over sending aid to key allies in Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. Divisions among Republicans in the House and Senate killed a major bipartisan border policy bill. Reforms to bedrock programs like Medicare and Social Security are desperately needed but no closer to getting passed. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives spent close to a month without a speaker last year due to infighting between moderate and hard right factions of the Republican party.
When U.S. Representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, begged his colleagues in November to “give me one thing I can campaign on and say we did,” he was articulating what many lawmakers and observers were feeling: Congress isn’t working.
The simplest expression of this is the number of bills passed by Congress. Just twenty-seven bills were passed last year — a record low — but even before that, the number of bills signed into law by the president has been falling.
Congress Is Passing Fewer Laws
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Experts point to several reasons for this. One key factor is an increase in polarization — Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically than they’ve been in the last 50 years, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. That’s led to a decrease in bipartisanship, a necessary ingredient for bills to pass in a governing body full of checks and balances.
Fewer bills getting through to the president’s desk means the small number of mandatory ones that Congress must pass — such as government funding or annual legislation authorizing defense policies — are getting longer, said Molly Reynolds, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, as lawmakers try to jam the bills with policies that wouldn’t otherwise get a vote.
“Those large packages have come to bear more of Congress’s legislating,” she said. A longer bill takes more time to read, debate and get voted on, slowing down the process further.
Drawing of a truck carrying an oversized load of green boxes. People are throwing boxes on and off the truck, seemingly in disagreement about what the truck should be carrying.
With more policies being shoved into bills increasing in length, the use of policies known as “poison pills” is another hurdle — partisan policies that will be completely unacceptable to the other party. Case in point: Republicans attempting to ban mail delivery of abortion pills via a crucial agriculture funding bill that must be reauthorized every five years.
The length of bills “represents an increasing dysfunction in the institution,” Michael Thorning, director of structural democracy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said. “Congress has difficulty taking action on a lot of individual pieces because of the politics or because of time constraints, and it’s easier to package some of these things up into ‘must pass’ bills… And then it’s a question of, ‘What can we add to this before it becomes so top heavy that it topples over?’”
The spikes in the number of bills passed correlate with periods when one party controlled all levers of government — House, Senate and the White House. But even when one party controls the majority, “unified party control is not doing as much work as it used to,” Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University, said. “The minority party has become especially increasingly aggressive in using the rules of the game, particularly in the Senate, in blocking measures from even going to the floor.” That can be seen in the number of measures passed by each chamber of Congress, which is falling too.
Fewer Measures Passed In Congress
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Another more elusive factor in Congress’s decreasing productivity is that members are spending less time talking to each other. A typical senator’s schedule includes flying back to Washington, D.C., on Monday for votes in the evening, then flying back to their home state on Thursday evening. The “Senate Friday” effect is commonly cited among reporters and staffers on the Hill – a sudden surge in activity on Thursday afternoons, as senators rush to finish any votes so they can go home for the weekend.
The House more often has votes Friday morning, but there is still an expectation of going back to the district for a longer weekend, plus recesses when lawmakers are home for weeks at a time. That Monday to Thursday schedule leaves just two full days for a laundry list of work.
Drawing of people standing on opposite sides of a chasm. Their body language, many standing with crossed arms, indicate frustration with the people on the opposite platform.
“Congress is not spending enough time in Washington to get the basics done,” Thorning said. The shortened in-person schedule “really interferes with members’ one opportunity to interact with each other, to learn collectively, to ask questions of witnesses collectively.”
Representative Derek Kilmer, a Democrat who chaired the now-defunct House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, said the issue of Congress’s shortened schedule was the main thing he would fix if given a choice.
“Part of the reason why when people are watching C-SPAN and no one’s there, it’s because they’re on three other committees at the same time,” he told Reuters. “The dynamic that creates is members ping pong from committee to committee. It’s not a place of learning or understanding. You airdrop in, you give your five minute speech for social media, you peace out.”
“Time is the biggest challenge,” Representative William Timmons, Kilmer’s Republican counterpart on the modernization committee, agreed. “We have to build trust with our colleagues, and we don’t have the time to build the trust with our colleagues.”
The amount of action happening on the floor isn’t a perfect representation of how much Congress is talking to each other – lots of action happens in committee rooms or briefings – but it is a marker of a decrease in action taking place in the main arena where lawmaking was intended to occur.
Less Action on The Floors of Congress
Fewer pages of proceedings are being recorded by the Congressional Record, which publishes all debates and speeches that take place on the floor in the House and Senate.
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It is not clear how these hurdles to productivity will be solved. Part of the problem is that the current Republican Party holds a tiny majority in the House of just five seats, giving disproportionate power to any small group of members who wish to exert their influence, as seen by the far right House Freedom Caucus repeatedly blocking legislation it disagrees with, even though it was put forward by their own party, much to the frustration of their colleagues.
“We’ve had divided government in earlier periods and haven’t seen this level of low legislative productivity,” Craig Volden, director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia, said. “The question is, what is the Republican Party going to sort itself into, in terms of its main priorities, and what is the best strategy they see as advancing those priorities?”
Timmons acknowledged facing this issue himself.
“I have somebody running against me (in the primary election) that agrees with all the votes that I make, he just doesn’t agree that I don’t scream and yell,” he told Reuters. “Next Congress we’re going to have to figure out how to relearn the muscle memory of voting as one… If we have a narrow majority and we can’t do anything, that’s not good.”
Kilmer is part of a wave of lawmakers retiring Congress – 45 at time of publication, not the highest number on record but enough to draw attention. But he remains optimistic about Congress’s ability to change.
“I don't think it's a secret that Congress is a fixer upper,” he said.
Sources: U.S. Congressional Record, Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia
Edited By: Julia Wolfe and Alistair Bell
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swldx · 3 months
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BBC 0423 1 Mar 2024
12095Khz 0359 1 MAR 2024 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 55445. English, ID@0359z pips and newsroom preview. @0401z World News anchored by Chris Berrow. At least 112 Palestinians are said to have been killed and 760 injured trying to get desperately needed aid in Gaza. Crowds descended on a convoy of lorries on the coastal road south-west of Gaza City, in the presence of Israeli tanks. Israel's military say tanks fired warning shots but did not strike the convoy. Some Palestinians say troops fired directly at them. A Palestinian witness told the BBC most of those who died had been run over as lorry drivers tried to move forward. The UN Security Council has scheduled a closed-door emergency meeting to discuss the incident. France said "fire by Israeli soldiers against civilians trying to access food" was "unjustifiable" and US President Joe Biden expressed concern the incident would complicate efforts by mediators to broker a temporary ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. More than a billion people are living with obesity around the world, global estimates published in The Lancet show, published by the World Health Organization. This includes about 880 million adults and 159 million children, according to 2022 data. With hours to go until Alexei Navalny's funeral, his team has said they continue to face difficulties in organising the farewell ceremony. His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said they had been unable to find a hearse to drive the body to church. "Unknown people are calling mortuaries and threatening them if they accept to take Alexei's body," Ms Yarmysh said. The funeral is scheduled to take place on Friday in Maryino, on the outskirts of Moscow. President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have made competing visits to the US border in Texas, each seeking to stress they can tackle illegal immigration. Mr Biden accused his Republican rival - who spoke of the "very dangerous" situation at the border - of hindering his efforts to crackdown on crossings. Republicans in the House of Representatives have blocked bipartisan border reforms, in what Democrats say is an effort masterminded by Mr Trump to deny them a win before the election. Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking highly classified military documents on the social media platform "Discord", is expected to plead guilty in his federal case. The government of President Bernardo Arévalo filed a criminal complaint on Thursday for “breach of duties” against the controversial Guatemalan Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, who in 2023 launched a judicial crusade that jeopardized the presidential transition. Workers Party of GB candidate George Galloway wins the Rochdale by-election by almost 6,000 votes. The former Labour and Respect Party MP, whose campaign focused heavily on Gaza, overturns a Labour majority with 12,335 votes. Galloway addresses the Labour leader in his victory speech by saying: "Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza". David Tully, an independent, comes second with 6,638 votes. Turnout in the by-election was 39.7%. Voters went to the polls on Thursday to choose a new MP to represent the Greater Manchester town following the death of Sir Tony Lloyd last month. A New Zealand court has ordered NZ$10m (£4.8m; $6m) in compensation to the victims of the White Island volcano disaster, where 22 people died. In December 2019, 47 people were touring the volcano when it erupted, killing nearly half of the group and gravely injuring everyone else. The firms which owned the island and operated tours were found guilty last year of negligence and safety breaches. @0406z "The Newsroom" begins. Backyard fence antenna w/MFJ-1020C active antenna (used as a preamplifier/preselector), Etón e1XM. 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63°. Received at Plymouth, MN, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2159.
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speedyposts · 3 months
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US Senate unveils $118bn deal on border, aid for Israel and Ukraine
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The United States Senate has unveiled a $118bn bipartisan deal that would boost border security and provide wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden and Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate have been pushing to resupply Ukraine with wartime aid but have faced resistance from conservative Republicans who have insisted on measures to tackle illegal immigration at the border with Mexico.
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The bill announced on Sunday would provide $60bn in aid to Ukraine, whose efforts to push back Russia’s invasion have been hampered by a halt in US shipments of ammunition and missiles.
The deal would also provide $14.1bn in military aid to Israel: $2.44bn to address security in the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched dozens of attacks on commercial shipping, and $4.83bn to support partners in Asia where tensions have spiked between China and Taiwan.
Under the deal, the president would be granted new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed with asylum claims and applications at the border would be subject to quicker and tougher enforcement.
Illegal immigration is expected to be a key issue during the presidential election in November, with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump campaigning heavily on claims of an “invasion” from the southern border.
Biden on Sunday urged Congress to “swiftly pass” the deal so he could sign it into law, warning Republicans who have expressed alarm about the security of the border that “doing nothing is not an option”
“Now we’ve reached an agreement on a bipartisan national security deal that includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I strongly support it,” Biden said in a statement.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would aim to hold a vote on the bill on Wednesday, but the package faces uncertain prospects in both the upper house and the House of Representatives amid scepticism from Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson.
“The Senate’s bipartisan agreement is a monumental step towards strengthening America’s national security abroad and along our borders,” Schumer said in a statement.
“This is one of the most necessary and important pieces of legislation Congress has put forward in years to ensure America’s future prosperity and security.”
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Johnson, who had previously declared the package “dead on arrival,” said his efforts to involve House Republicans in the Senate deal had been rebuffed and reiterated support for a House package of tough immigration measures.
“What we’re saying is, you have to stem the flow,” Johnson said.
The package’s support for Israel could also face resistance from some Democrats.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has called for the removal of $10bn earmarked for offensive weaponry while keeping funds for defensive systems.
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progressive-globe · 4 months
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Common Dreams:
Critics have long argued that Republicans are interested only in using immigration—and increasingly hysterical claims of a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border—as a political cudgel, and not in genuine policy reform. That view appeared to receive some confirmation Thursday when Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) addressed reports that former President Donald Trump—the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination—has instructed Republican senators not to strike an immigration deal with Democrats so that he can make the border a central focus of his bid for a second White House term.
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marylemanski · 2 years
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I have been sharing an ongoing list of civil & human rights rollbacks during the Trump administration curated by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights(https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks/#2020). Below is a list of rollbacks from the second quarter of the last year Trump was in office. During this time, Republicans continued to attack immigrants, permanent residents, low income children, education, sexual assault victims, SNAP, LGBTQIA foster children, foster parents & high school athletes, health & economic recovery during the beginning of the pandemic, immigration, Black & disabled voters, higher education, the Affordable Care Act (during a pandemic), transgender homeless people, refugees, police reform, the possibility of statehood for Washington, DC, and used police officers and the National Guard to disperse peaceful protesters outside the White House using teargas and flash-bang explosions so that Trump could pose for photos, while holding up a Bible (upside down BTW), in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.
On April 20, the Trump administration extended its March 2020 CDC rule on border restrictions until May 20, 2020.
On April 22, Trump signed an executive order to temporarily ban the issuance of green cards to people seeking permanent residency in the United States – a move that was viewed as a shameless manipulation of the pandemic to justify the administration’s xenophobic policies.
On April 30, the Department of Education issued guidance, flouting congressional intent under the CARES Act, that directs school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools.
On May 6, the Department of Education released its final rule on Title IX that raises the bar of proof for sexual misconduct, bolsters the rights of those accused, and introduces new protections that include sexual harassment. If the rule takes effect, it will silence sexual assault survivors and limit their educational opportunity.
On May 12, the Department of Agriculture appealed an injunction that blocked the agency from proceeding with cuts to the SNAP program (food stamps). The new requirements, if the USDA wins its appeals, would strip 688,000 Americans of their food benefits.
On May 12, the Department of Health and Human Services eliminated sexual orientation and gender identity and tribal data collection in the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS, which collects case-level information on all children in foster care and those who have been adopted with title IV-E agency involvement).
On May 14, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 6800, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.
On May 15, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent a letter of impending enforcement action to the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and six school districts declaring that Title IX requires schools to ban transgender students from competing in school sports based on their gender identity and threatening to withhold funding from Connecticut schools if they do not comply.
On May 19, the Trump administration announced the indefinite extension of its CDC order that allows federal authorities at the border to immediately return migrants to their home countries.
On May 26, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in an Alabama federal court in support of the state’s onerous absentee ballot requirements that put Black voters and voters with disabilities at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On May 29, Trump vetoed a bipartisan resolution to overturn a Department of Education rule and hold Secretary DeVos accountable for failing to provide relief to students defrauded by for-profit colleges.
On May 29, Trump issued a presidential proclamation aimed at restricting the entry of graduate students and researchers from China.
On June 1, police officers and the National Guard dispersed peaceful protesters outside the White House using teargas and flash-bang explosions so that Trump could pose for photos, while holding up a Bible, in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.
On June 3, the Department of Justice filed a brief in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to allow religious-affiliated adoption agencies to refuse child placement into LGBTQ homes. The Justice Department is not a party to the case.
On June 12, the Department of Health and Human Services issued its final rule rolling back the non-discrimination protections (Section 1557) of the Affordable Care Act. The rule will promote discrimination in medical care.
On June 14, The Washington Post reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development will propose a rule that would roll back Obama-era guidance requiring single-sex homeless shelters to accept transgender people.
On June 15, a 161-page regulation from the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice was published in the Federal Register that would make it exceedingly difficult for migrants to claim asylum in the United States.
On June 19, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest arguing that the Equal Protection Clause permits Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which bars trans girls and women from school sports teams.
On June 22, Trump issued a proclamation to expand and extend his April 22 order that suspends some immigration from outside the United States. The new proclamation extends the initial green card ban in the April proclamation until December 31, 2020, and includes additional significant restrictions on several categories of temporary guest worker visas.
On June 24, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.
On June 24, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 7120, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.
On June 24, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 3985, the Just and Unifying Solutions To Invigorate Communities Everywhere (JUSTICE) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.
On June 25, the Trump administration filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the entire Affordable Care Act should be invalidated – saying “the remainder of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in effect.” The brief was filed in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
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robertreich · 4 years
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6 Crucial Races That Will Flip the Senate
This November, we have an opportunity to harness your energy and momentum into political power and not just defeat Trump, but also flip the Senate. Here are six key races you should be paying attention to. 1. The first is North Carolina Republican senator Thom Tillis, notable for his “olympic gold” flip-flops. He voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, then offered a loophole-filled replacement that excluded many with preexisting conditions. In 2014 Tillis took the position that climate change was “not a fact” and later urged Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, before begrudgingly acknowledging the realities of climate change in 2018. And in 2019, although briefly opposing Trump’s emergency border wall declaration, he almost immediately caved to pressure. But Tillis’ real legacy is the restrictive 2013 voter suppression law he helped pass as Speaker of the North Carolina House. The federal judge who struck down the egregious law said its provisions “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.” Enter Democrat Cal Cunningham, who unlike his opponent, is taking no money from corporate PACs. Cunningham is a veteran who supports overturning the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, restoring the Voting Rights Act, and advancing other policies that would expand access to the ballot box. 2. Maine Senator Susan Collins, a self-proclaimed moderate whose unpopularity has made her especially vulnerable, once said that Trump was unworthy of the presidency. Unfortunately, she spent the last four years enabling his worst behavior. Collins voted to confirm Trump’s judges, including Brett Kavanaugh, and voted to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial, saying he had “learned his lesson” through the process alone. Rubbish. Collins’ opponent is Sara Gideon, speaker of the House in Maine. As Speaker, Gideon pushed Maine to adopt ambitious climate legislation, anti-poverty initiatives, and ranked choice voting. And unlike Collins, Gideon supports comprehensive democracy reforms to ensure politicians are accountable to the people, not billionaire donors. Another Collins term would be six more years of cowardly appeasement, no matter the cost to our democracy. 3. Down in South Carolina, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is also vulnerable. Graham once said he’d “rather lose without Donald Trump than try to win with him.” But after refusing to vote for him in 2016, Graham spent the last four years becoming one of Trump’s most reliable enablers. Graham also introduced legislation to end birthright citizenship, lobbied for heavy restrictions on reproductive rights, and vigorously defended Brett Kavanaugh. Earlier this year, he said that pandemic relief benefits would only be renewed over his dead body. His opponent, Democrat Jaime Harrison, has brought the race into a dead heat with his bold vision for a “New South.” Harrison’s platform centers on expanding access to healthcare, enacting paid family and sick leave, and investing in climate resistant infrastructure. Graham once said that if the Republicans nominated Trump the party would “get destroyed,” and “deserve it.” We should heed his words, and help Jaime Harrison replace him in the Senate. 4. Let’s turn to Montana’s Senate race. The incumbent, Republican Steve Daines, has defended Trump’s racist tweets, thanked him for tear-gassing peaceful protestors, and parroted his push to reopen the country during the pandemic as early as May. Daine’s challenger is former Democratic Governor Steve Bullock. Bullock is proof that Democratic policies can actually gain support in supposedly red states because they benefit people, not the wealthy and corporations. During his two terms, he oversaw the expansion of Medicaid, prevented the passage of union-busting laws, and vetoed two extreme bills that restricted access to abortions.The choice here, once again, is a no-brainer.
5. In Iowa, like Montana, is a state full of surprises. After the state voted for Obama twice, Republican Joni Ernst won her Senate seat in 2014. Her win was a boon for her corporate backers, but has been a disaster for everyone else.
Ernst, a staunch Trump ally, holds a slew of fringe opinions. She pushed anti-abortion laws that would have outlawed most contraception, shared her belief that states can nullify federal laws, and has hinted that she wants to privatize or fundamentally alter social security “behind closed doors.” Her opponent, Democrat Theresa Greenfield, is a firm supporter of a strong social safety net because she knows its importance firsthand. Union and Social Security survivor benefits helped her rebuild her life after the tragic death of her spouse. With the crippling impact of coronavirus at the forefront of Americans’ minds, Greenfield would be a much needed advocate in the Senate. 6. In Arizona, incumbent Senate Republican Martha McSally is facing Democrat Mark Kelly. Two months after being defeated by Democrat Kyrsten SINema for Arizona’s other Senate seat, McSally was appointed to fill John McCain’s seat following his death. Since then, she’s used that seat to praise Trump and confirm industry lobbyists to agencies like the EPA, and keep cities from receiving additional funds to fight COVID-19. As she voted to block coronavirus relief funds, McSally even had the audacity to ask supporters to “fast a meal” to help support her campaign. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, became a gun-control activist following the attempt on her life in 2011. His support of universal background checks and crucial policies on the climate crisis, reproductive health, and wealth inequality make him the clear choice. These are just a few of the important Senate races happening this year. In addition, the entire House of Representatives will be on the ballot, along with 86 state legislative chambers and thousands of local seats.
Winning the White House is absolutely crucial, but it’s just one piece of the fight to save our democracy and push a people’s agenda. Securing victories in state legislatures is essential to stopping the GOP’s plans to entrench minority rule through gerrymandered congressional districts and restrictive voting laws — and it’s often state-level policies that have the biggest impact on our everyday lives. Even small changes to the makeup of a body like the Texas Board of Education, which determines textbook content for much of the country, will make a huge difference. Plus, every school board member, state representative, and congressperson you elect can be pushed to enact policies that benefit the people, not just corporate donors. This is how you build a movement that lasts.
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davebuckleslefthand · 3 years
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mariacallous · 2 years
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A standoff over the debt ceiling. Aid to Ukraine on the chopping block. And impeachment proceedings against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – or perhaps even president Joe Biden himself.
With polls indicating they have a good shot of winning a majority in the House of Representatives in the 8 November midterms, top Republican lawmakers have in recent weeks offered a preview what they might do with their resurgent power, and made clear they have their sights set on key aspects of the Biden administration’s policies at home and abroad.
Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the chamber, this week signaled in an interview with Punchbowl News that if Congress is going to approve an increase in the amount the federal government can borrow – as it’s expected to need to by sometime next year – Republicans are going to want an agreement to cut spending in return.
“You can’t just continue down the path to keep spending and adding to the debt,” said McCarthy, who is likely to be elevated to speaker of the house in a Republican led-chamber. “And if people want to make a debt ceiling [for a longer period of time], just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, okay, we’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior.”
Asked if he might demand that Social Security and Medicare, the two massive federal retirement and healthcare benefit programs that are nearing insolvency, be reformed as part of debt ceiling negotiations, McCarthy replied that he would not “predetermine” anything.
But the California lawmaker warned that members of his caucus were starting to question the money Washington was sending to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s invasion. “Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check,” he told Punchbowl.
Then there’s the question of if Republicans will choose to exercise the House’s powers of impeachment – as they did against Bill Clinton in 1998, and as Democrats did to Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021.
The prime target appears to be Mayorkas, whom Republicans have pilloried amid an uptick in arrivals of migrants at the United States’ border with Mexico. Yet another target could be Biden himself – as Jim Banks, chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, which crafts policy for the party, suggested on Thursday.
Political realities may pose an obstacle to McCarthy and his allies’ ability to see their plans through. High inflation and Biden’s low approval ratings have given them momentum to retake the House, but their chances of winning a majority in the Senate are seen as a toss-up. Even if they did win that chamber, they’re unlikely to have the two-thirds majority necessary to convict Biden, Mayorkas, or whomever else they intend to impeach – or even the numbers to overcome Democratic filibusters of any legislation they try to pass.
Matt Grossman, director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, questioned the GOP’s willingness to legislate. The party’s plans, as outlined in the Commitment to America McCarthy unveiled last month, appear thin in comparison to similar platforms rolled out in 1994 and 2010, when Republicans again took back Congress’ lower chamber from Democratic majorities.
“There’s a longstanding asymmetry between the parties. Republicans legitimately want government to do less,” he said.
“They’re doing pretty well electorally without necessarily needing a policy agenda, and they’re tied to, kind of, defending the Trump administration or attacking the Biden administration. There’s not much of a felt need for a lot of policy.”
There are also signs of division within the party over how the GOP should use its new majority. In his interview with Punchbowl, McCarthy said he was against “impeachment for political purposes” and focused instead on addressing crime, border security and economic issues, all familiar themes for Republicans running this year.
The split was even more pronounced when it came to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence called in a speech at influential conservative group the Heritage Foundation for Republicans to continue to support the country, saying “there can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to” Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The day after, the foundation’s president Kevin Roberts put out a statement saying: “Heritage will vigorously oppose Washington’s big spenders who attempt to pass another Ukrainian aid package lacking debate, a clear strategy, targeted funding and spending offsets.”
Democrats are assured control of Congress until the end of the year, and have taken note of the apparent erosion of will to support Kyiv. NBC News reports they may push for another big military aid infusion in a year-end spending bill, intended to keep the Ukrainians armed for months to come.
It seems clear that Republicans will eventually coalesce behind a strategy to strong-arm the Biden administration for some purpose, but Grossman predicted the likely result would be similar to the 2013 government shutdown, when then president Barack Obama and the Democrats refused the GOP’s demands to dismantle his signature health care law.
“With McCarthy it just seems like he is a go along,” he said. “He’s going to be a go-along speaker and that’s going to be the case with a pretty fractious caucus.”
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Trump déjà vu: It's always about him
January 31, 2024
ROBERT B. HUBBELL
Remember that time—during Trump's presidency—when every proposed action by the US government was evaluated by a single criterion: Does the action advance Trump's personal interests? Although Trump is not president, House Republicans are giving us a reminder of what it was like when Trump was president. The text of the proposed immigration bill has yet to be released, but House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly told his GOP colleagues on Tuesday that the bill is “dead on arrival” in the House. Why? Because Trump told him so—in order to advance Trump’s election prospects.
The situation is even more maddening than it appears at first blush. The House will likely vote on vague impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. One of the grounds for impeachment is that Mayorkas has lost “operational control of the border”—a fact that is unassailably true because Texas is blocking federal access to portions of the border!
There are other stories that deserve attention, but immigration is the lead issue. We should know by Friday if Trump will kill an immigration compromise that has been months in the making and whether the House will impeach a Cabinet secretary for the first time in 150 years.
[...]
The House GOP prepares to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
It appears that the House will issue articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week. Here is what you need to know: The impeachment is a sham designed to distract from the GOP’s abject failure to address immigration reform in decades. For a lengthier and more detailed explanation, see WaPo, The Republican effort to impeach Mayorkas, explained. (Accessible to all.)
WaPo interviewed an expert on immigration policy, Frank O. Bowman III, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, who summarized the proposed articles of impeachment as follows:
The first article is essentially a claim that the various policy decisions of the secretary, with which they happen to disagree, are ‘violations of law,’ which have produced, in their view, a whole bunch of bad consequences,” Bowman said. “Their claims that he has violated the law [are] wrong because virtually every one of them is an argument about the way in which the secretary has interpreted the frankly contradictory provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act and other immigration legislation.”
Moreover, even if Mayorkas were convicted and removed by the Senate (which won’t happen), President Biden could simply appoint another Homeland Security Secretary to implement the same policies that are angering Republicans. In other words, the entire proceeding is pointless and ineffectual.
Meanwhile, Congress is not acting to pass an immigration bill. And, by the way, Mike Johnson, how much progress have you made on eleven budget bills that must pass to avoid a government shutdown in March? Wasting time on a show-trial impeachment is the last thing that Republicans should be doing.
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
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beardedmrbean · 1 year
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Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla. and CNN's Don Lemon engaged in a heated discussion about immigration following President Biden's 2023 State of the Union.
During Wednesday's "CNN This Morning," Donalds criticized Biden's humanitarian parole program, which would allow 30,000 Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, or Nicaraguans into the U.S. a month if they enter the country at a legal point of entry and have a sponsor. 
The congressman claimed that the new border measures did little to stem the flow of immigration into the U.S. and merely "reallocated" the problem from illegal entry points to legal ports. He also said the Biden administration was trying to "shift the burden" rather than cauterize the issue.
After Donalds claimed that there were 1.6 million migrant entries under Biden in 2021, and over 2 million in 2022, Lemon said those numbers did not match up with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 
IMMIGRATION HAWKS, EX-TRUMP OFFICIALS URGE GOP LEADERS TO UNITE BEHIND ‘FLAGSHIP’ BILL TO END BORDER CRISIS
"The president put out a plan, wouldn't a better response be, well we don't agree with this, but we'd like to take this framework and work on it and try and make it better—rather than just saying it's not great, this isn't going to work?" Lemon asked. 
Donalds then shot back at Lemon that he knows his numbers on border crossings add up and said Biden's executive orders on immigration have led to massive increases in people crossing the border illegally. 
"You didn't answer my question," Lemon interjected. 
"I am," Donalds said back before Lemon restated his initial question about working with Biden's framework. 
"We would love to work with the president. We would love to," Donalds said. "But you actually have to secure the border. You have to take care of the issues—
REP. ROY INTRODUCES BILL TO BLOCK ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AS HOUSE GOP FIRES UP BORDER PUSH
Lemon again interjected, noting Donalds was criticizing something that happened in the past and was looking backward instead of forwards. He also compared the lawmaker to GOP members who heckled Biden during the State of the Union over surging fentanyl overdoses. 
Donalds then said looking back was essential to understand that the overall protocols had remained the same under the current administration. He then urged Biden to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy, including adjudicating asylum before someone reaches the border. The Republican then attempted to propose another change before Lemon cut him off again.
"I don't want to keep arguing with you and I want my colleagues to get in, but is there an answer instead of we don't want to look back that says moving forward, here's what we can do?" Lemon again asked. 
"Moving forward, you have to give border agents the proper tools in order actually secure the border. The president has taken that from them. That's what he did," Donalds said.
Biden's administration has been rocked by a migrant crisis at the southern border now into its third year, with a record 2.3 million migrant encounters and nearly 600,000 "gotaways" in FY 2022. In December, there was a record 251,000 migrant encounters alone.
Republicans have battered the administration over the crisis, blaming the administration's rolling back of Trump-era border security policies and interior enforcement. But the administration has blamed a hemisphere-wide crisis and has hit out at Republicans for not agreeing to funding and reform measures proposed by the administration.
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newstfionline · 3 years
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Wednesday, May 5, 2021
AP-NORC poll: Government should help Americans age at home (AP) A majority of Americans agree that government should help people fulfill a widely held aspiration to age in their own homes, not institutional settings, a new poll finds. There’s a surprising level of bipartisan agreement on some proposals that could help make that happen, according to the late March survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. For example, 63% favor more funding to help low-income people age at home, a policy reflected in President Joe Biden’s stimulus plan and his COVID-19 relief law. That includes about half of Republicans and about three-quarters of Democrats. Overall, only 10% are opposed. Behind it all is a deep desire among Americans to maintain their independence in an aging society.
Widespread Commodity Shortages Raise Inflation Fears (NYT) Commodity shortages are rippling across the United States economy as growing demand for housing, cars, electronics and other goods runs up against supply chain congestion and high tariffs left behind by former President Donald J. Trump. The shortages—and the price increases they are eliciting—are being watched closely by the Biden administration, which is under increasing pressure from industry groups and businesses to take steps to ease them. Automakers want the White House to help them get the semiconductors they need to make cars, while the housing industry is asking for tariff relief. Pressure to intervene could intensify as the administration pushes for a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure investment package that includes money for building roads, bridges and electric vehicle charging stations—all of which could become increasingly expensive if prices keep rising.
Heeding complaints, Biden lifts refugee cap to 62,500 (Reuters) U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday he has resurrected a plan to raise refugee admissions this year to 62,500 after drawing a wave of criticism from supporters for initially keeping the refugee cap at a historically low level. Soon after taking office in January, Biden pledged to ramp up the program but then surprised allies when he opted to stick with the lower cap out of concern over bad optics, given the rising number of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border with Mexico, U.S. officials have said. But the refugee program is distinct from the asylum system for migrants. Refugees come from all over the world, many fleeing conflict. They undergo extensive vetting while still overseas to be cleared for entry to the United States, unlike migrants who arrive at a U.S. border and then request asylum.
New York Region to Accelerate Reopening (NYT) New York and its neighbors New Jersey and Connecticut announced on Monday that they were lifting almost all their pandemic restrictions, paving the way for a return to fuller offices and restaurants, a more vibrant nightlife and a richer array of cultural and religious gatherings for the first time in a year. The relaxation of rules starting May 19 is a testament to the fact that coronavirus cases are down and vaccination rates are rising. New York will also bring back 24-hour service to the subway on May 17, after a year of overnight closures, a move critical for night-shift workers.
Colombia protests (Foreign Policy) Mass protests in Colombia sparked by President Ivan Duque’s new tax proposals continued on Monday—a day after Duque withdrew the unpopular measures—and are expected to resume today. Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla tendered his resignation on Monday, saying in a statement that his presence in government would “complicate the quick and effective construction of the necessary consensus.” Although Carrasquilla’s connection with the tax reforms precipitated his fall, he had become a figure of ridicule after he failed to provide an accurate answer for the current price of a dozen eggs when questioned by local media last month.
A farmer moved the border between France and Belgium so his tractor could have more room (AP) The border between Belgium and France has been largely stable for 200 years. That is, until a Belgian farmer annoyed with the placement of one of the stones marking the storied territorial divide inadvertently shifted the border 7.5 feet so his tractor could move more easily. The Belgian village of Erquelinnes, which lies along the 390-mile border with France, had as a result grown by seven feet. The French town of Bousignies-sur-Roc in turn shed more than a few inches. The stone in question dates to 1819, one year before the signing of the Treaty of Kortrijk, which set the modern-day boundaries of the once-warring states, according to the BBC. Much has improved in relations between Belgium and France in the two centuries since Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. “We should be able to avoid a new border war,” Aurélie Welonek, the mayor of Bousignies-sur-Roc, told a French newspaper. Belgian authorities told the BBC that they will ask the farmer to move the border back. If he does not comply, they may need to seek help from the Franco-Belgian border commission, which has not been summoned since 1930.
Opposition chief calls for lockdown as India’s coronavirus cases cross 20 million (Reuters) Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi called for a nationwide lockdown as the country’s tally of coronavirus infections surged past 20 million on Tuesday, becoming the second nation after the United States to pass the grim milestone. India’s deadly second wave of infections, the world’s biggest surge in coronavirus infections, has seen it take just over four months to add 10 million cases, versus more than 10 months for its first 10 million. Currently, the country has 3.45 million active cases.
Day 1 of the End of the U.S. War in Afghanistan (NYT) KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan—A gray American transport plane taxied down the runway, carrying munitions, a giant flat screen television from a C.I.A. base, pallets of equipment and departing troops. It was one of several aircraft that night removing what remained of the American war from this sprawling military base in the country’s south. The United States and its NATO allies spent decades building Kandahar Airfield into a wartime city, filled with tents, operations centers, barracks, basketball courts, ammunition storage sites, aircraft hangars and at least one post office. The scenes over the weekend were almost as if a multitrillion-dollar war machine had morphed into a garage sale. At the airfield’s peak in 2010 and 2011, its famous and much derided boardwalk housed snack shops, chain restaurants, a hockey rink and trinket stores. Tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops were based here, and many more passed through as it became the main installation for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan’s south. Now, half-demolished outdoor gyms and empty hangars were filled with nearly 20 years’ worth of matériel.
As Lebanese cry for justice, politics paralyzes the system (AP) Even after she was taken off an investigation into alleged financial crimes by a money transfer company, the defiant Lebanese prosecutor charged ahead. She showed up at the company’s offices outside of Beirut with a group of supporters and a metal worker, who broke open the locked gate. Ghada Aoun obtained data from Mecattaf Holding Company that she contends will reveal the identities of people who sneaked billions of dollars out of Lebanon amid the financial meltdown that has hit the country. The move was part of a public feud between Aoun and Lebanon’s state prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat, who had dismissed her from the case, saying she’d overstepped with two earlier raids. Their feud has turned into scuffles between their supporters in the street. That is the problem in Lebanon: The judiciary is so deeply politicized it paralyzes the wheels of justice, mirroring how factional rivalries have paralyzed politics. Political interference in the judiciary has for years thwarted investigations into corruption, violence and assassinations. But mistrust of the judiciary is thrown into even starker relief now, when Lebanese are crying out for politicians to be held accountable for the disastrous crises in their country—not only the financial collapse but also last August’s massive explosion in Beirut’s port that killed scores and wrecked much of the capital. The explosion has been blamed on incompetence and neglect. “Those who hold on to power have set up a judiciary that is loyal to them in order to fight their opponents and protect their interests,” retired state prosecutor Hatem Madi told The Associated Press.
Netanyahu misses deadline, political future in question (AP) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has missed a midnight deadline for putting together a new coalition government. His failure to reach an agreement late Tuesday raises the possibility that Netanyahu’s Likud party could be pushed into the opposition for the first time in 12 years. The turmoil does not mean that Netanyahu will immediately be forced out as prime minister. But he suddenly faces a serious threat to his lengthy rule. His opponents already have been holding informal talks in recent weeks to lay the groundwork for a power-sharing deal.
More than a dozen people killed by Islamist militants in northeast Nigeria (Reuters) More than a dozen people, including seven soldiers, were killed by Islamist militants in an attack in northeast Nigeria, four sources told Reuters. The militants arrived in the Ajiri community in the Mafa local government area of Borno state on motorcycles early on Sunday, killing an army commanding officer and six soldiers, the sources said. The assailants also killed six civilians, burned down nine housing blocks and carted away valuables, the sources told Reuters.
More veggies (WSJ) According to federal survey data, 76.6 percent of 51- to 70 year old women and 85.6 percent of 51- to 70-year-old men eat less than the recommended amount of vegetables. The thing is that’s actually pretty good compared to teenagers, who really need to eat some greens: fully 98.8 percent of 14- to 18-year-old girls and 98.5 percent of 14- to 18-year-old boys ate less than the recommended amount of vegetables, which is particularly bad developmentally speaking.
A good Samaritan (CNN) The 23-month-old girl who fell out of a car and into a bay Sunday after a multi-vehicle crash on a bridge in Ocean City, Maryland, is expected to make a full recovery thanks to a “humble hero” who jumped into the water to save the child, authorities said Monday. Eight people were taken to hospitals Sunday after the crash on the Route 90 bridge left a car dangling off the guardrail, authorities said. All eight were discharged from hospitals and are doing well, Ryan Whittington, firefighter and medic at Ocean City Fire Department, told CNN. Whittington said the man who saved the toddler is choosing to remain unnamed publicly. The fire department is calling him the “humble hero” for his rescue. The man was driving on the bridge, and his car was also involved in the crash, Whittington said. The drivers were pointing down to the Assawoman Bay, where he saw the girl lying in the water, face down. “He just jumped into action,” said Whittington, adding that the water in that area is about 5 feet deep, and the jump was more than 25 feet. “He saved a 23-month-old child. There’s no doubt in our mind that if he had not did what he did when he did it that we would be having a different headline to this story,” Whittington said.
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marithlizard · 3 years
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seen on twitter in the last 24 hours
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Department rescinds 2018 memo establishing 'zero tolerance' border policy that resulted in family separations. 
JUST IN: House and Senate Democrats introduce legislation to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2025.
NEWS: The Biden White House will have an ASL interpreter for the press briefing today and will have one moving forward. It will be accessible via https://bit.ly/3qMJSCT and WH social accounts
TODAY: Biden will sign 4 EOs taking first steps towards rooting out systemic racism in housing and criminal justice including ending DOJ's use of private prisons. More to come @CourthouseNews 
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Also, a task force was established on day one to reunite the separated kids with their families, and more Cabinet members are being confirmed every day.  
By governmental bureaucracy standards this administration is moving at LIGHT SPEED.  They won’t be able to fix all the damage, or do a tenth of the reforms they should with Republicans blocking them at every turn.  And impeachment looks DOA in the Senate.  But shit is getting done. 
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